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An additional 1% is tacked on for payments made from outside your home country.

More importantly, Google is cutting out the AdWords free transaction processing it currently offers, which gave many AdWords advertisers the ability to use Checkout with no processing fees.

While Checkout fees are in line with PayPal’s, I think Google’s changes show that Google is essentially throwing in the towel on competing with PayPal. PayPal is far from perfect (I have my personal complaints) but without a distinct competitive advantage, Google Checkout isn’t compelling.

While I guess that you could argue lower fees and an AdWords subsidy didn’t do much for Google, now that its fees will be almost identical to PayPal’s and AdWords advertisers won’t be able to earn free use of Checkout, there’s definitely no possible competitive advantage to be had for Google in this space. Therefore I think it’s safe to call any possible battle between PayPal and Checkout over.

I see this as a real blow to Google since this payments was one market where it really had a good opportunity to leverage its position and relationships with the millions of AdWords advertisers to give PayPal a good fight. There are certainly a lot of merchants (myself included) who would love to have an alternative to PayPal.

Meanwhile, eBay thinks it can double the size of PayPal by 2011, which would mean $100bn to $120bn in transactions processed. If successful in achieving that goal, eBay would see an additional $4-5bn in revenue in 2011 from PayPal. I’m sure executives at Google wouldn’t sneeze at that type of additional revenue today. Unfortunately it won’t be coming from Checkout.

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A month after our UK affiliate census went live, we’ve just published our first US Affiliate Census, produced in association with MediaTrust. I thought it was worth outlining some of the key differences – and also the similarities – between affiliate marketing on either side of the Atlantic.

I love watching the mighty Cesar Millan go to work on problematic dogs on his show The Dog Whisperer. He really understands how to get the best out of a dog. I need at least a two hour fix of this show on an average weekend.

I was thrilled to discover that Cesar is using Twitter to communicate with his fans. I mean, he’s too busy being the pack leader for me to really believe he has time to tweet, but I was almost giddy with delight after Cesar sent me a direct message once I started following him. It read: “Thanks for the follow! Stay calm and assertive!”

Anyway, I started wondering whether some of Cesar’s advice could be applied to Twitter (and social media more broadly). So, at the risk of making a bunch of bad analogies, here’s 10 tips for Twitter with a nod towards – and a wag of the tail at – the Dog Whisperer.

Over the years, I’ve worked with many clients of all sizes and shapes. Many have been businesses that need help with their internet presence and ongoing internet strategy.

When the discussion turns to SEO, one of the most common misperceptions many clients have is that SEO is a destination; that you can do a few things and you’ll reach the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

According to a newly-published study published by Pew, nearly three-quarters of Facebook users polled said they didn’t know that Facebook generates and stores data about their interests and traits, and, when they came to learn this, over half indicated that they were uncomfortable with Facebook’s practice.

Mastercard, the third-largest credit card processor in the US, has announced a new policy that will make it more difficult for some businesses to automatically convert free trials into recurring subscriptions.